My mix with a sub

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ido1957

ido1957

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sounds like crap...... I mixed my tune(s) on my Event TR8N's and got a mix that I believe was okay. I took my music CD to my friend's car stereo store and played it through one of his display units. It played through 5" full range and 12" subs. There was a crossover I think for the subs. There was so much bass it was horrible. The high end just seemed to disappear. Athough the vocals were audible, the guitars and drums were pretty weak.

Then we put it through a different display with just full range sets of speakers 6x9" and 5". The mix was much closer to what I heard on the monitors but lacked a bit of bottom end as compared to the TR8N's. We turned the bass up +3 (db's?) on the controls and it sounded pretty good.

The reason I asked is because I turned the bass way down on my mix. I was astounded at the amount of bass (guitar) these subs produced! I turned down the bass guitar eq on the mix to around 11:00, used a high pass (75HZ) and upped the eq at 450Hz + 6 db, to get a reasonable bass guitar sound.

Are subwoofers that hyped? Are my mixes too bass heavy?

Here's a link to my mix, if you'd like to audition it on your system....I have this in the MP3 Clinic also but this is more mix oriented question about the subs vs monitors.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/songInfo.cfm?bandID=395006&songID=4488201

BTW - used the frequency chart on Southside Glen's page - very helpful and worth checking out.
 
Subwoofers do what subwoofers do; reproduce low frequencies. How "hyped those lows become is a function of not just how much bass you have in your mix, but how the sub is balanced with the rest of the system. I suspect the systems you were listening to were set up to entice the "it's gotta bump" crowd to buy it for their rides so they can proceed to impress hot chicks a block away while ruining their hearing for life. I run a sub with my KRKs, and while I won't claim that it is perfectly set up, it does give me a better idea what's happening with the low lows. The idea, of course, is to extend the flat response of your system. What you heard was probably not that at all.
 
How would you know what the sub frequencies are doing unless your monitoring with them?

High passing at 75hz will lose some rumble, but 80-150 is the boomy loud part. I sure if you watched a spectrum anilyzer you'd notice a ton of energy in that range. I know when I'm mixing bass guitar I always high pass around 40, then low shelf from around 250 down a few DB.
 
A lot of nearfield monitors are rolling off in freq response around the same area that a lot of consumer subs are tuned for. Just gotta get used to it. Kind of like, you only want to barely be able to make out any deep bass on your nearfields; if it is really kicking, you know you have too much sub bass. Those subs are just presenting what you couldn't actually hear on your monitoring setup; whether due to cancelation from your room, or lack of low freq extension on your monitoring speakers.
 
Make sure you listen to some well-mixed pro CD's in your mix room. Train your ears to hear what it sounds like on your monitors when things are properly balanced. A/B the pro recordings with your mix and some of the differences should be easier to hear.

If not, you may need to address your monitoring situation. I augment two sets of nearfields with a Bose stereo system that has a sub and I switch between them all. I hate this Bose system, but I can hear spectral balance on it better than on my nearfields (for the same bass roll-off reasons).

With less-than-pro monitors and rooms, I find that having more than one option to listen to gives better perspective. It's like running out to your car...without having to run out to your car.

I hate to admit it publically, but my mixes have also benefitted greatly from Har-Bal. I do not really use the EQ in Har-bal, and I stay away from any spectrum matching crap completely. I just use the spectrum analyzer portion when I can't seem to dial in what I want. It looks at the whole file as an average, and can really help with bass problems. Plenty of folks love to shout "you mix with your ears, not your eyes" and that's true, but ears get fatigued and make mistakes, rooms and monitors are not perfect and sometimes it's nice to have a tool that can help stop you from doing something stupid.
 
Something weird is going on because I played your mixes on my hi-fi klipsch promedias with sub that can put out more bass then I ever need and I cranked the sub and still barely had enough bass.

They must have been using some type of bass enhancement at the store because there isn't that much bass in your mix.
 
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